Good news: We didn't do anything to offend Thao Nguyen. We didn't break up, her and us ("us" being Portland). It's not us; it's her. She needed a little time away to clear her head and, you know, find herself.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," Nguyen said recently while noting she had recently been to Jackpot Records for an in-store performance after the release of "We the Common," her first record since 2009 with her band, the Get Down Stay Down.

All true, but infrequent compared with a few years ago when Nguyen was essentially local. Her management was here. She released three records -- two with the Get Down Stay Down and another in 2011 with singer-songwriter Mirah -- on the Kill Rock Stars label. She recorded at Type Foundry. She made a hilarious Christmas song and debuted it on Live Wire.

Then, suddenly, a lot less Thao.

She didn't go far. She was in San Francisco seeing what it was like, for once, not to be everywhere else. It is upon that experience -- slowing down and fitting in and finding community -- that "We the Common" is built.

"A lot of the record is about wanting to be a participant in your life," Nguyen said.

It sounds like the kind of thing you do every day just by waking up and getting out of bed, but it's harder when you're constantly tired, hungry and staring down the next long drive to yet another gig. "You miss out on a lot of people," Nguyen said.

When she finally stepped away from the van and set out to explore home, there was an accounting that had to happen. "I've got minds to ease, and thoughts to think through," she sings on "Holy Roller."

Nguyen didn't loiter around the Bay Area. She got involved there and in other communities she writes about on "We the Common."

At the invitation of friends, she got involved in the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The album's title track, "We the Common (For Valerie Bolden)," was inspired by an inmate and written after Nguyen's first visit to Valley State Prison.

"There is this light of strength and optimism that not a lot of people I know on the outside have," Nguyen said. What she found, she said, was an inspiring amount of humanity, "an interest in life still," contrasted against the prison environment.

At a retreat for women writers, Nguyen met singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, and that friendship resulted in the countrified duet "Kindness Be Conceived."

She was asked back to a retreat in New Orleans sponsored by the advocacy group Air Traffic Control. "That city," she said. "I've never seen anything like it." She means its musical community, specifically, and the spirit of the people, generally, both of which come through on "The Feeling Kind."

"Maybe they can wake my ghost in New Orleans," Nguyen sings.

Prisons, a writer's retreat, an advocacy trip to New Orleans, and extended time at home wouldn't seem to have a lot in common, but each is filled with like-minded people coming together. From that, an album.

While the record features the occasional dirge, it's mostly the punchy, catchy, fuzzy pop that Nguyen does best, brought to life by a roster of 17 musicians working mostly in San Francisco (and briefly in Dallas).

And now that it's finished, she and the band have to hit the road. Right back where she started. If all goes well, the record will do well, and that will mean more touring. That point's not lost on Nguyen, either.

On "We Don't Call," she sings: "Well bye, bye baby, I'm going to work. Chase myself all over the Earth."